Marketable Tweetables: The Prospect for Hotel Marketing on Twitter for 2012

It was only a mere eight months ago that I was writing on ‘novel concepts' such as how best to market a hotel on Twitter. Well, it shocks me to say it, but Twitter is now a firmly ‘established' entity in the online world and there's nothing very avant-garde about it. Much like Facebook fan pages, the fair share of hotels have an online presence here and most people who want to be on Twitter are already using the application, and quite adroitly at that.

It's a mature product, and as such, strategies have changed once more. Without that newcomer panache, Twitter users are far less ‘excitable' than they were even six months ago. Just being active for the sake of activity is the status quo - water under a vast digital bridge - and it won't sway consumers. So, how can hotels reinvigorate their online marketing campaign?

Here are four suggestions to keep your social media efforts alive and well, or help get you off the ground floor is you're a late entrant to the Twitter game:

1. Quality of Followers - Whenever someone evaluates a Twitter account, the first attribute they'll likely look at is the number of followers. It's a quantity that can be easily relayed up and down the management chain to track progress. There's also the crowd theory aspect at play - people will only listen to you if others are already listening. First, keep in mind that getting followers is easy. If you dedicate yourself to following industry leaders and other travel personalities, a fair amount will follow you back. Rinse and repeat until you're in the quadruple digits. Aside from increasing your followers from a pool of related users, you have look for quality followers - friends you actually talk with. These are the people who respond to your tweets and promote your material to their followers. Foster these Twitter relationships by replying to questions through public messages or reading your feed and retweeting interesting material to your followers. Make lists and form genuine relationships with these individuals. Twitter is, of course, just another avenue to find and connect with other people.

2. Maintain Frequency - Quality trumps quantity, but much like the number of followers, your daily number is important. With so many tweets every hour and so many users generating content, you need frequency so that your followers will see your tweets when they login at various times throughout the day. Two or three tweets a week between Monday and Friday is the bare minimum to show that you are fully committed to using this online channel. Retweeting and quoting captivating messages from your quality followers will help fill the gaps. A good way to maintain frequency is to use Twitter management software to schedule your tweets for various times throughout the day. The key is to develop your message and be consistent with it.

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Source : Ehotelier.com, By Larry Mogelonsky